Book review: William & Dorothy Wordsworth: All in Each Other (Oxford Today)

I reviewed William & Dorothy Wordsworth: All in Each Other by Lucy Newlyn for Oxford University’s alumni publication Oxford Today.

It says a great deal about the way our minds work that Lucy Newlyn (Lady Margaret Hall, 1975) feels she must place her cards firmly on the table just eight lines into this literary biography’s preface.

She is, she explains, interested in the close relationship between siblings William and Dorothy Wordsworth “as evidence of their intense emotional and spiritual need” (her italics). Reader, if you’re looking for scandalous revelations of incestuous passion, you’ve come to the wrong place.